The chart below shows the ratio of total vacancies to total unemployed. If this number exceeds one, then the labor market is considered to be tight because there are more vacancies than the total number of unemployed in the economy.
The chart below shows the national unemployment rate together with a long-run forecast for the unemployment rate, using the Federal Reserve projection for the U.S., the Bank of England projection for the U.K., and the IMF projection for Germany.
The following charts show monthly employment growth for each country. Because monthly jobs data can be very volatile, we have also added the three-month and six-month moving average to display the trend. For the U.S. and the U.K., we are showing the payroll employment numbers. Unfortunately, a similar data series is not available for Germany. We therefore use total employment numbers instead.
The chart below displays nominal wage growth for the three countries. The data is smoothed using a 3-months moving average. For the U.S., we include the average hourly earnings from the BLS as well as the median wage growth tracker from the Atlanta Fed. The latter has the advantage that it tracks the same individuals over time and therefore does not suffer from compositional effects (workers entering or exiting the labor market).
The following charts show the balance between labor market demand and labor market supply. Labor demand is proxied by total employment plus the total number of vacancies. Labor supply is proxied by the labor force, meaning the sum of employed and unemployed persons in the economy.
